Part Four

Part Four

I never really knew how hard the ground could be until I had
to sleep on it. I mean, intellectually I was aware that the
ground was hard. It stands to reason that it must possess a
certain degree of rigidity, otherwise you’d sink right
through it every time you went for a walk, and that sort of thing
wasn’t on at all.

Oh yes, I knew it was hard, all right. It wasn’t the
first time I had slept rough, of course, but on those occasions
there had been a certain element of choice, not to mention a
sleeping bag, an old blanket or a gut full of alcohol to cushion
my discomfort. This time I had the benefit of none of those
things. My bed was, if the Professor was to be believed, half a
universe away - along with my pyjamas, my slippers and my hot
water bottle in the shape of a panda. There was, therefore, no
choice for any of us but to spend the night beneath the stars -
strange, unfamiliar and disquieting stars, at that.

Nevertheless, and in spite of the Janet’s stentorian
snoring, Cathy’s unnerving bouts of whimpering, and the
Professor’s Herculean farting, I managed to drift into an
uncomfortable, hard and lumpy sleep. And for a few fitful hours I
managed to dream myself back into normality - or at least a kind
of normality. My journey to work, my job at the office, my
in-tray piled high, the giant rabbit in accounts called Mildred,
being chased round the canteen by a Cyclops with carrots for
toes, riding home on a conveyor belt, being pulled over by the
police only to discover that I had been completely naked all day.
And yet, strangely, it all seemed so much more reasonable than
being whisked away to an alien planet in a toilet.

But then slowly the sharp, brittle stones began to dig in. The
cold, damp air bit into my bones. The strange, hazy light greeted
my opening eyes and I felt that horrible, sickening, sinking
feeling that accompanies all early risers when they realise that
the real world has snatched them brutally out of the arms of
Morpheus.

I propped myself up on one arm, dusting the dirt from my
jacket with my free hand. Janet was still fast asleep, her face
lying in a bubbling pool of dribble. Cathy seemed to be awake,
but as she was sitting with a stunned expression on her face,
simply rocking backwards and forwards like a mental, it was
rather difficult to tell. Of the Professor there was no sign at
first. Then a noise behind me made me turn and I spied him
standing on top of the Podulator.

I got to my feet. “What the hell are you doing up
there?” I asked.

“Ah, Mr Dickins,” he said. “Awake at last,
are you?”

“Ah Professor,” I countered grumpily. “A
great one for pointing out the blindingly obvious, aren’t
you? So, are you going to tell me what you’re up
to?”

“Well now, let’s see,” the Professor began
patronisingly. “What could I possibly be doing standing on
top of the Podulator with these in my hand?” He waved what
appeared to be a pair of binoculars at me. “I would have
thought it was ‘blindingly obvious’, as you put it,
but if you really want me to explain the relative merits of this
vantage point and the benefits of getting a complete picture of
our surroundings, then - “

“All right, all right!” I replied, cutting him off
mid-gabble. It was too early in the morning for that sort of
nonsense, and as it didn’t look as though I would be
getting a cup of coffee in the immediate future, I was really in
no mood for such peevishness. I rose and hoisted myself up onto
the Podulator beside the Professor, and looked around.
“Well,” I said. “I guess being up here gives
you a better view of the trees. So what?”

“Not just trees, Mr Dickinson,” said the
Professor. He pointed at the far off horizon.
“Look!”

I looked. I saw trees. On closer inspection I saw further
trees, and it wasn’t beyond my admittedly pedestrian
imagination to suspect that still more trees lay beyond the
reaches of my field of vision. I said so.

“No, no, no!” the Professor responded, more
urgently. “Look!”

I looked again. Was there a faint glimmer of grey where the
ground met the sky? Or was I just imagining it? I nudged the
Professor keenly. “You might be right,” I murmured.
“Here, let me borrow those binoculars.”

“Trinoculars,” the Professor corrected me.

I was momentarily distracted, and for a brief second I
didn’t register what the old tosser was saying. My look of
puzzlement must have been obvious.

“They’re tri-noculars,” Professor Mendes
repeated, and he handed me said item. “My own special
invention - three lenses, see?”

I held them up before me. They did indeed have three
eyepieces. I was quite dumbfounded, and the Professor obviously
took my silence as a sign that I was impressed. However, when I
finally spoke his expression of evident pride quickly fell.

“Well, what’s the bloody point of that?” I
asked.

“Look,” he said, pointing to his invention, as if
this would explain all. “Three lenses?”

“Fantastic,” I said dryly. “Why?”

“Well, isn’t it obvious?” he replied.

“It’s obvious that you’re freakin’
deluded,” I said. “But that’s all”

“But there are three lenses!” he insisted, and
when I still failed to understand, he was forced to explain.
“Look, with two lenses, you can see in three
dimensions.”

“Obviously,” I said.

“Obviously,” the Professor repeated. “And it
must be equally obvious that if you have three lenses, you would
be able to see in four dimensions.” He began to grow misty
eyed. “You would,” he said, lowering his voice to a
whisper, “be able to see into the future!”

I looked at the Professor’s invention, the trinoculars.
Then I looked up at the sky and muttered a curse. Finally I
looked at the Professor, standing there all smug and pleased with
himself. “But I’ve only got two eyes,” I
said.

“Ha!” the Professor replied in disgust. “I
can’t be held responsible for the deficiencies inherent in
human physiognomy!”

“It’s your own inherent deficiencies which ought
to concern you, you mad bastard,” I retorted. “Do you
really expect people to take you seriously when you come out with
crap like this. No wonder you spend most of your time in a
toilet.”

By this time the Professor was livid. In fact, he actually
stamped his foot, something I’d only ever seen before in
cartoons. “How dare you!” he roared. “I have
perfected a device capable of seeing through time itself, and you
simply mock it. That’s the trouble with the younger
generation today - they lack vision.”

“Damn right we do,” I said. “By about
thirty-three percent, if your ‘trinoculars’ are
anything to go by, you dozy sod.”

He was about to come back with another blistering retort, but
in his rage he stumbled and fell off the top of the Podulator. He
landed in the dirt next to Janet, waking her up. In her
bleary-eyed stupor she simply prodded him curiously before
glancing around her and finally realising where she was.
“‘Ere, what you up to?” she demanded of him,
then slapped him across the face before he had the opportunity to
reply. Stunned, dishevelled and covered in shit, Professor Mendes
climbed shakily to his feet, made a perfunctory attempt to brush
himself down then started to scramble back onto the top of the
Podulator.

Looking down at him, I could hear somebody laughing, and
moments later I realised that it was me. I hadn’t enjoyed
myself this much since Tuesday. My all too evident mirth only
served to make the Professor more annoyed. “I fail to see
what’s so funny,” he huffed and puffed as he
struggled to pull himself onto the roof. “I suppose
it’s too much trouble for you to help me up, isn’t
it?”

I turned away from him, raising the trinoculars to scan the
horizon. The grey object at the edge of the forest resolved into
a series of squat, concrete structures. “Hey, there does
seem to be something over there,” I said out loud.
Everything suddenly went dark.

“Exactly,” said the Professor. I lowered the
trinoculars to find him standing directly in front of me. His
coat was torn, he was scratched and he was covered in dirt. The
sight of him like this lifted my spirits no end. “I think
it’s some kind of futuristic city,” he said.
“We should investigate.”

“I think its probably some out-of-town retail
park,” I opined. “But either way, we should be able
to find help there.”

“Agreed,” he replied. “So we’ll set
out immediately after breakfast.” He turned around, a look
of supreme satisfaction on his face, took a deep breath and fell
off the Podulator again.

“Breakfast!” exclaimed Cathy as she jumped up and
down, clapping her hands excitedly. I was acutely aware that my
own stomach was growling hungrily, and so I shared some of her
enthusiasm. Unlike her, however, I managed to maintain some
degree of dignity, and somehow found the strength to prevent
myself from leaping up and down like a retard.

We waited - Cathy, Janet and I - outside the Podulator, whilst
Professor Mendes rummaged around inside in search of our repast.
I must admit to being impressed the old boy’s foresight in
bringing provisions. Well, perhaps ‘impressed’ is the
wrong word. Let’s just say that the promise of food had
made me slightly less inclined to beat his skull to a pulp
against the nearest boulder.

Peering inside, I was a touch disheartened to see him pull a
damp cardboard box from behind the U-bend - but hey, food was
food and at that point I’d have been happy to eat
anything.

“Well here we are,” the Professor proclaimed to
his expectant audience as he emerged blinking into the light.
“Allow me to introduce the modern miracle that is my patent
Food Mangle.” He held up the box with evident pride.

Now, I’m not very technically minded, and I’d be
the first to admit it, but even I could see that the
Professor’s patent Food Mangle was nothing more than an old
shoe box with a slot cut in the front, a cardboard handle on the
side and decorated with silver paper. Still, if it kept him
happy, where was the harm?

“Go on then,” I said. “Open it up. Dish out
the goodies.”

The Professor clutched the box to his chest. “And just
what makes you think there’ll be any breakfast for
you?” he snapped. “You insult my work, you force your
way into my toilet and you use up all the paper. Why should I
extend any hospitality to you?”

I baulked slightly. “But Professor, be
reasonable,” I said, knowing full well that I was asking
way too much of the uppity old tosser. “We have nothing to
eat.”

“Well, I can’t help that,” the Professor
snorted. “You people can’t come crashing in here and
expect me to feed you. You should have brought
sandwiches.”

“You selfless unfeeling old goat!” I exclaimed, my
stomach gurgling and my anger rising. “Look at Janet -
can’t you see that the poor woman is starving?”

“Actually, I’m all right, thanks,” Janet
replied.

“She hasn’t eaten for hours,” I
continued.

“I had a Twix before I came out,” she said.

“Look how pale she’s gone,” I proceeded
regardless. “Clearly she’s on the point of
collapse.”

“Honestly, I feel fine,” said Janet. I hit her
hard in the stomach, and she doubled up in pain and dropped to
the floor.

“Look Professor,” I said, gesturing to her
prostrate form. “She’s delirious with
hunger.”

The Professor sighed. “Very well,” he conceded.
“But I’m not doing this out of any sense of charity,
or because it’s ‘the decent thing’. I’m
just doing it because it’s the only way I can stop your
blasted whining.”

I watched as the old swine attended to his ‘Food
Mangle’. There were two dials on the top, made out of the
caps from tubes of toothpaste. With tongue clamped between his
teeth in concentration, he started to tweak them this way and
that, like a safecracker trying to discover a combination. Then,
having evidently made something of a breakthrough, he suddenly
cranked the handle and a small, blue sausage slid from the slot
at the front of the machine.

“Ta-da!” he announced musically.
“Breakfast!”

I reached out and took the sausage, which was cold and clammy
to the touch. I looked at the Professor. Then I looked at the
sausage. Finally I looked back at the Professor. “What the
hell is this?” I said at last.

“That, young Dickbury, is steak tartare,” the
Professor huffed with pride.

“That,” I responded, holding up the sausage
between forefinger and thumb, “is a piece of blue
crap.”

“Go on,” the Professor urged me. “Eat
it.” He cranked the handle of his machine again and
produced similar sausages for the others.

“You want me to eat crap?” I queried, as if I
really needed to ask.

“Well I will,” Janet said, and she hungrily tucked
into hers. Seeing that she hadn’t come to any immediate
harm, I cautiously did the same.

“You see,” the Professor explained, “taste
is very much like paint. As you can mix two colours together to
make a third, so you can do a similar thing with
taste.”

I took another bite and grimaced as I swallowed. I thought the
old boy was talking rubbish. Still, it would explain why it
tasted like matt emulsion.

“Mine tastes like WD40,” said Janet.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” said the Professor.
“Let me change it for you.”

“No, no,” said Janet. “I like
WD40.”

I imagined she was just being polite. The thing was
disgusting, but I suppose it was better than nothing. “So
this sausage contains all the nutrients and goodness of regular
food, yes?” I asked.

“No,” said the Professor. “That’s the
bit I’m working on.”

I stopped myself taking another bite. “Then why the hell
am I eating this crap?” I suddenly shouted angrily, and I
slammed the sausage down on the floor. I guess I did it with
rather too much force, as it bounced up again and struck the
Professor on the nose. He ran off screaming into the depths of
the jungle, clutching his face. Rather embarrassed, I turned to
my two remaining companions.

“Whoops,” I said, feeling rather awkward. “I
never guessed it was going to bounce that high.”

Cathy nodded sagaciously, as if she was suddenly possessed of
some inner wisdom. “Ah,” she crooned. “Food can
be very dangerous in the wrong hands. If you can’t treat it
with a certain degree of respect, then you should leave it well
alone.”

I suppose she had a point, I conceded, and as she and Janet
went off to bring back the Professor, I set about retrieving my
sausage.